Holly Springs Gazette

The Public Printing. By the report of Legislative proceedings which appears in our columns to-day, our readers may see that the anti-bond members, whose tender consciences are shocked beyond measure at the idea of paying a debt of the State, think nothing of nullifying a law, for the purpose of enabling one of their pets to escape the consequences of a fraud which he had practised upon it. Nor do they even stop at this. They proceed to pass another law, which gives Mr Fall $4 per page for executing the public printing—twice as much as was asked by other printers,—the competition of whose bids he evaded by a juggling artifice.

The Secretary of State was required by law to contract for the public printing "on the lowest terms practicable." Numerous bids were submitted by practical printers, among others, one by us, proposing to contract at one dollar and ninety five cents per page, and at this rate of compensation we could have realized a fair profit on the work. Mr Fall however, proposed to do the work for one cent, and entered into a contract, and gave security, to do it for that sum. He wished to obtain something more than a reasonable compensation, and, in order to do this, resorts to a contemptible trick to secure the printing, relying upon his political friends in the Legislature to release him from his contract, and expecting that they would give him a good thick slice from off the treasury loaf in consideration of the "dirty work" he had done for them. The result shows how justly he calculated upon their willingness, not only to overlook his fraudulent device to evade the intent of the law, but to vote him a gratuity equal to the cost of all the public printing.

It may be that the people will be pleased that their representatives should give away the public money as a reward for partisan services, to a man whose chief merit consists in having borne aloft the banner of repudiation; but we are inclined to doubt it. We ask them to look over the yeas and nays, and see who it was that voted to throw away the people's money upon such a man as Mr Fall.